The Dragon's Tapestry

At nuwind they came upon Opalwing butting and pawing hungrily at the wiregras “So that’s how you got back so fast,” Maug said. “Thought you might have used magic.” He snorted, and Marwen resisted the urge to strike him. She turned to him, chin and chest thrust out.

“I’ll sit forward,” she said. “You may hold on however you wish. Just don’t touch me.”

“Gor, who’d want to,” he retorted but without conviction, as if he didn’t even care enough to fight with her.

With the roughest start Marwen could get out of Opalwing, they began their journey toward Kebblewok.

When they stopped to give Opalwing a rest, Marwen roasted some stickstem roots, which Maug devoured peel and all. They had salvaged two jars of oatbeer and some burned bread from the ruins, but they were saving them. For a long time, they did not speak, though Marwen smiled at him once or twice. Whether she was afraid of him or whether she had some childish need to have him like her, she did not know. When he finally spoke, she started a little.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

She tried to hold the food in her cheek so that she could speak with her mouth full. “Grondil told me once that if I kept the rising sun to my right and the norwind blowing into my face, that I should come to the city of Kebblewok.”

He nodded. “And then?”

Marwen let the dry nutty-tasting meat of the root slide warm and heavy down her throat. She did not know where she was going. Her future spread out before her like the endless rolling Hills on either side, without lane or landmark. Grondil was dead, and now, strangely, she longed for her father, Nimroth, who had loved her after all. She felt stripped of purpose. All that was left was her strange inheritance, the dragon’s tapestry. But before that she must have her own.

“I will go to the Oldest in Loobhan. Perhaps she can help me discover the spell to change Cudgham back so he can witness my tapestry. And after that I think I shall seek my father’s house,” she said. Nimroth—a strange name, she thought, one I have never heard before.

Maug looked at her shrewdly. “You don’t believe that stuff, do you? Master Clayware’s babblings? Surely he was delirious.” Marwen coughed as some of the root went down the wrong way. When she recovered herself, she said,”You do not believe?” Slowly, deliberately, his eyes full upon Marwen, he shook his head.

It was while they were eating that they felt a charge in the air, as though a storm were gathering. Marwen looked about her. The sky toward the sea was glowering, but in the east the sun lay like a pink egg in a nest of golden clouds. Below it the land was barren.

She ignored the feeling for a time as she ate, but when the hair on her forearms raised, she jumped up, dropping her root. She looked around for Cudgham-ip, but he was a little way off, near where Opalwing grazed. Then Marwen saw her. The Taker.

Her head was bent, her white hair like bits of cloud or cotton. Her apron glowed brilliant blue like a shred of summer sky, the stitches of patchwork like birds in flight far off. As she walked with halting deliberation toward Marwen, she muttered and mumbled and chortled incoherently.

Marwen felt bile burning in the back of her throat. “Go away, old woman!” she called. Maug jumped up.

The Taker lifted her head, though Marwen could tell she saw little. She laughed sweetly and waved with stiff spotted fingers.

“No, go away!” Marwen screamed. “Is not Grondil’s life enough? Is not a whole village enough to fill you?”

The old woman shuffled on, reaching out her arms toward Marwen as if she would embrace her. Marwen began stepping backward, then turned and ran. Maug ran beside her until they reached Opalwing. Marwen’s fingers shook as she pulled the stockings from the wingwand’s antennae. Maug had already mounted and given the signal to fly before Marwen had a chance to mount.

But the wingwand did not move. Marwen jumped on in front, too frightened to be angered or repulsed by Maug’s arms reaching around her waist.

“Fly, Opalwing, fly!” She pushed her hands cruelly into the space between the beast’s head and body shells.

Then the wingwand’s legs buckled and they had to jump from her back to avoid being pinned as the beast collapsed.

“Opalwing!” Her terror turned to disbelief and anger, for attached to Opalwing’s leg, still venting its swift venom, was the creature Cudgham-ip.

Marwen wrenched it off by the tail. “Anything, so as not to be left behind?” she hissed.

Then the sound of the old woman’s wheezing breath was behind her, and without looking back Marwen ran, still holding Cudgham by the tail. Maug, gasping for breath, ran beside her.

Marwen ran until her legs were heavy as stone, and she could not breathe without pain. She looked back. She could not see the Taker. She lay down and closed her eyes until she could no longer feel her heart beating. She still held the ip by the tail.